LIBEL CASE HISTORIAN 'WANTED BUNK REPORT TO BE TRUE'
Monday, January 24, 2000 16:56
http://www.lineone.net/newswire/cgi-bin/newswire.cgi/skynews/uk/story/2000/1
/c--2000-1-24-3n14.html
Historian David Irving was today accused of basing his rejection of the
existence of homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz on a report he knew to be
"rubbish".
The 62-year-old author of Hitler's War, who is seeking High Court libel
damages against American academic Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books over a
claim that he is a 'Holocaust denier', firmly rejected the allegation made
during cross-examination by their barrister.
Mr Richard Rampton QC dismissed as "rubbish" the 1988 findings in a report
written by a man called Fred Leuchter, who had taken samples from various
parts of the remains at Auschwitz and concluded that there were never
homicidal gas chambers there.
The defendants claim that the Leuchter report was "bunk"; that Mr Irving
knew that to be the case, but ignored the "stupidities" of it because he
wanted it to be true.
Mr Rampton accused Mr Irving of saying "publicly that which you know to be
untrue about the validity of the Leuchter report".
During a visit to Florida in 1995 he was "categorical" in his dependence on
the findings of the Leuchter report.
Mr Irving, of Duke Street, Mayfair, central London, who is representing
himself during the lengthy trial before Mr Justice Gray in London, replied:
"I still am."
He told the court his position remained the same and he would be justifying
that during the course of the trial.
Mr Irving, who rejects the claim he a Holocaust denier, is suing Professor
Lipstadt and Penguin over her 1994 book, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing
Assault on Truth and Memory, which he says generated waves of hatred against
him.
The author, who does question the number of Jewish dead and denies the
systematic extermination of the Jews in concentration camp gas chambers, has
been accused by the defendants of being "a liar and a falsifier of history".
At the start of the case Mr Rampton told the court that in 1988 a man of
German origin, Ernst Zundel, was put on trial in Canada for publishing
material which denied the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz.
In defence of this charge Mr Zundel's lawyers recruited Mr Leuchter "who
seems to have made his living as some kind of consultant in the design of
execution facilities in the USA".
He was dispatched to Auschwitz to seek evidence of the use - or otherwise -
of homicidal gas chambers. Counsel said his report was declared inadmissible
by the Canadian judge on the grounds that Mr Leuchter had no relevant
expertise.
Mr Rampton said Mr Irving gave evidence at the trial and during his visit he
read the Leuchter report and "shortly thereafter he declared himself
convinced that Leuchter was right and that there were never any homicidal
gas chambers at Auschwitz".
One of the main reasons Mr Leuchter advanced for his conclusion was that it
was to be expected that any residual traces of hydrogen cyanide - the
killing agent in the Zyklon B pellets used by the SS - should be very much
higher in those parts of the remains of Auschwitz which were identified as
gas chambers for killing people than in those parts which were known to have
been used for killing lice.
Mr Rampton said the report recorded very small traces of hydrogen cyanide in
the gas chamber remains and relatively large traces in the delousing
remains: "Therefore, said Mr Leuchter, the alleged gas chamber remains could
obviously never have been gas chambers at all."
The defendants say that the Leuchter report has been "comprehensively
demolished since", but Mr Irving submits that the "broad trend" of the
report was substantially borne out by later reports.Mr Rampton said that the
Leuchter report was at fault in its assertion that the alleged gas chamber
remains could not have been gas chambers because they contained very small
traces of hydrogen cyanide - while there were relatively large traces in the
delousing remains.
Mr Rampton pointed out that it was possible to kill human beings with a 22
times lower concentration of the poison than was required to kill lice.
Mr Irving said that he accepted that the figures were "flawed" but asserted
that the Leuchter report was "substantially substantiated" by later reports.
He said that in 1945, the Poles had carried out tests on metal ventilation
gratings and human hair found at Auschwitz.
And in 1989/90, the Auschwitz authorities carried out tests and came up with
"unsatisfactory" results which they kept secret.
A third more scientific report written later by a qualified chemist came up
with figures which "broadly confirmed" the conclusions which Leuchter had
reached.
Mr Rampton told Mr Irving that the court was not concerned with proving or
disproving what happened at Auschwitz but "your state of mind and your
standards of truth when it comes to reporting history".
Mr Irving said that the remains of cyanide found on the "gas chamber"
gratings in the 1945 report was clear evidence that the room was used for
"fumigating cadavers" or clothing which were heavily infested with typhus
lice.
Alternatively, he added, the room - which had a door fitted with a
peep-hole and double-thickness glass - could have been planned for use
as a bomb shelter.
Mr Rampton dismissed Mr Irving's theory that Zyklon B was put into a room
where people were already dead as "bizarre".
Mr Irving said that the hair of about 500 women, which was mentioned in the
1945 report as bearing traces of cyanide, was actually found in the area of
Auschwitz where stolen property was stored.
Mr Irving said that the theory that all the evidence led to the probable
conclusion that this was a mass extermination by gassing was "the conclusion
of the closed mind".
An invoice in his possession, dating from early 1943, showed, he said, that
the chamber was used as a "disinfestation plant" to combat the "appalling
plague" that hit Auschwitz in 1942/3.
Mr Rampton said that "notwithstanding this catalogue of fundamental errors"
(in the Leuchter report) "you publicly, in your public role, have adhered to
it as if it was the Gospel of St John".
Mr Irving said what he had relied on was the chemical part of Leuchter's
findings.
The hearing was adjourned until tomorrow.
Cyanide was used to kill lice' claims Irving
http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/Times/frontpage.html?999
TIMES London
BY MICHAEL HORSNELL
TRACES of cyanide in human hair recovered from Auschwitz and on metal
ventilation grilles over the concentration camp's gas chambers were evidence
of a delousing programme by the Nazis and not of mass extermination, David
Irving, the Hitler historian, said yesterday.
Mr Irving told a High Court judge that the SS used the gas chambers simply
to fumigate bodies and clothing and hair shorn after death from inmates of
the Polish concentration camp in the face of a plague of lice.
He accepted that, according to a report by a forensic laboratory in Krakow
in December 1945, residual traces of hydrogen cyanide were found by
scientists. Subjects for analysis included a 55lb bag of hair thought to
have been taken from about 500 young Jewish women. Mr Irving said: "Corpses
arrived in a fully clothed state. As a corpse cooled, the lice crawled off
the body, so you had an infestation problem. These were not homicidal gas
chambers. They were used to delouse clothing and cadavers. The Germans
processed human hair as part of hygiene methods." Told that experts on
Auschwitz would give evidence that what was happening there was mass gas
extermination, Mr Irving, 62, said: "That is the conclusion of a closed mind."
The historian was beginning his third week under cross-examination by
Richard Rampton, QC, during his libel action against Deborah Lipstadt, the
American academic, and Penguin Books, which published her work Denying the
Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. He is suing both for
damages over the claim that he is a Holocaust-denier who has twisted history.
Mr Irving, who is accused of trying to exonerate Hitler for what happened to
the Jews, claims that he is the victim of an international conspiracy to
ruin his reputation as an historian. Yesterday, he went on to claim that the
chambers, which were fitted with a door consisting of a peephole and
thickened glass, were used as bomb shelters by the SS.
Mr Rampton, counsel for the defendants, has told the court that between the
first edition of his book, Hitler's War, in 1977 and its second in 1991, Mr
Irving's views had undergone a big change. In the later edition, all traces
of the Holocaust as an historical truth had disappeared and Auschwitz had
been "transformed from a monstrous killing machine into a mere slave-labour
camp".
Yesterday Mr Irving said that he stood by the man whose work had persuaded
him that mass extermination never took place at Auschwitz. Fred Leuchter, a
consultant in the design of execution facilities in America, had visited the
camp in 1988 on behalf of a German, Ernst Zundel, who was on trial in Canada
for publishing material that denied the existence of homicidal gas chambers
at Auschwitz.
In a report, Mr Leuchter recorded only very small traces of cyanide in the
gas chamber remains and relatively large traces in the delousing remains -
concluding that the camp had not been used for extermination.
The report was condemned as "flawed rubbish" by Mr Rampton, but Mr Irving
responded: "It was pioneering work, even though it has been superseded.
Leuchter was barking up the right tree."
The hearing continues.
Atlantic Constitution
Holocaust skeptic admits use of flawed evidence
But he denies any falsification
http://www.accessatlanta.com/partners/ajc/epaper/editions/today/news_18.html
Bert Roughton Jr. - Staff Correspondent
Tuesday January 25
London -- A controversial historical writer who denies as a "big lie" that
Jews were slaughtered in gas chambers at Auschwitz admitted in court Monday
that the study upon which he originally based his contention was
substantially flawed.
Nevertheless, David Irving said he still believes no Jews were gassed at
Auschwitz because he is unimpressed with evidence supporting the traditional
account.
"We are entitled to at least one unambiguous, not read-between-the-lines,
document that would give us a clear smoking gun," Irving testified Monday.
"That document does not exist."
Irving is suing Emory University professor Deborah Lipstadt and her
publisher, Penguin Books, for alleged libel over assertions made about him
in her 1994 book, "Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and
Memory."
Lipstadt portrayed Irving, 62, as a prominent and dangerous "Holocaust
denier," who believes the systematic murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazis
during World War II never took place. She also depicts him as an extremist
who manipulates, distorts and falsifies history for his own purposes.
Lipstadt's attorneys are trying to prove that Irving either has lied or
ignored evidence available to him when he has denounced accepted accounts of
the Holocaust.
When asked about the overwhelming body of documents, physical evidence and
eyewitness accounts of the mass killings at the infamous Nazi concentration
camp, Irving said he did not accept the conclusion that Nazis systemically
killed as many as 2 million Jews in gas chambers at the camp and then burned
their bodies in specially built furnaces.
"No, I don't agree with this," Irving said. "There are other arguments that
are just as plausible."
Irving, who has never visited Auschwitz, said it was more likely the
structures identified as gas chambers were used as air raid shelters or as
places to administer poison gas to corpses to kill typhus-carrying fleas and
lice.
Irving bases his assertions about Auschwitz on a 1998 report by Fred
Leuchter, an American with expertise in execution facilities.
Leuchter concluded that residual traces of hydrogen cyanide --- the killing
agent in the Zyklon B pellets used by the Nazis --- in the buildings
identified as chambers were too low to support the contention that people
were put to death inside. He also noted that hydrogen cyanide levels were
much higher in the nearby de-lousing chambers.
Leuchter studied Auschwitz to provide evidence in a Canadian court case of a
man accused of publishing material that denied the existence of gas chambers
at Auschwitz.
The judge in the Canadian case disallowed the report because he ruled
Leuchter lacked the necessary qualifications.
Defense attorney Richard Rampton, who is representing Lipstadt and Penguin,
dismissed the Leuchter report as "bunk."
Rampton argued that it would be expected that residual levels of hydrogen
cyanide in the gas chambers would be lower than in de-lousing rooms because
it takes 22 times more cyanide to kill lice than it does to kill people.
Subsequent analyses of the Leuchter report have attacked the study's
methodology as well as its conclusions, he said.
Rampton said Irving has persisted in basing his assertions on the Leuchter
report, even though the historian knows it is faulty.
Irving acknowledged that the report was seriously flawed, but he said he
still believes that its findings about the poison residue marked an
important breakthrough. "I accept that the Leuchter report was flawed, but
its findings have been replicated," he said. "It's been superseded."
The trial is expected to last until March.
Meanwhile, a new study shows that claims attacking the Holocaust have
reached a widespread audience but have so far failed to convince many people.
The American Jewish Committee on Monday released a survey of 11 countries.
The report said that interpretations of World War II events varied from
country to country but few people denied the Holocaust.
The most recent survey, conducted in Sweden in December, found that 86
percent of 1,000 people had heard these claims but only 1 percent believed
it possible the mass slaughter of Jews during World War II never happened.
The highest proportion of people who said it seemed possible the Nazi
extermination of 6 million Jews never happened was in East Germany, with one
out of every 10 believing this.
Seven percent of Britons and Austrians, 5 percent of French, 4 percent of
Australians, 2 percent of Russians and 1 percent of Americans and Poles said
it was possible the Holocaust did not happen.
###
HOLOCAUST REALLY HAPPENED, JUDGE TOLD
Tuesday, January 25, 2000 17:22
Lineone News
http://www.lineone.net/newswire/cgi-bin/newswire.cgi/skynews/uk/story/2000/1
/c--2000-1-25-3n26.html
An Auschwitz expert told the High Court today that there was a "massive
amount of evidence" of the use of the camp as a site for mass extermination.
Robert van Pelt, Professor of Architecture at the University of Waterloo in
Canada and author of Auschwitz, 1270 To The Present, said that evidence had
become slowly available during the Second World War through reports from
escaped inmates.
It had become more substantial through eyewitness accounts immediately after
the camp's liberation and was confirmed by Polish forensic investigations in
1945-46 and the confessions of leading German camp personnel.
He said it was "highly implausible" that the existence of the gas chambers
was a piece of "atrocity propaganda" fabricated by the British.
The evidence that Auschwitz was equipped with homicidal gas chambers which
were systematically used between the summer of 1942 and autumn of 1944 had
"emerged cumulatively from a convergence of independent accounts".
It had become possible to assert as "moral certainty" the statement that
Auschwitz was an extermination camp where the Germans killed around one
million people with the help of gas chambers.
Prof van Pelt was giving evidence for American academic Deborah Lipstadt and
Penguin books in their defence of a libel action brought by historian David
Irving.
The 62-year-old author of Hitler's War is seeking damages over a claim that
he is a "Holocaust denier" in Lipstadt's 1994 book, Denying The Holocaust:
The Growing Assault On Truth And Memory.
Mr Irving, who is representing himself before Mr Justice Gray, who is
hearing the lengthy case without a jury, denies the systematic extermination
of Jews in concentration camp gas chambers.
Accused by the defendants of being "a liar and a falsifier of history", he
depends on a 1988 report by a man called Fred Leuchter, who had taken
samples from ruins at Auschwitz and concluded that there were never
homicidal gas chambers there.
Mr Irving says Prof Lipstadt's book has generated "waves of hatred" against
him.Professor van Pelt described Crematorium Two at Auschwitz =96 where he
says 500,000 people died =96 as the "absolute centre of the atrocity".
Evidence for the killings included blueprints for building works, the
buildings themselves, and eyewitness accounts of camp officials and
sonderkommandos =96 Jewish prisoners selected to work in the crematoria.
Professor van Pelt said he was "more than moved" to visit Auschwitz.
Under cross-examination by Mr Irving, he said: "I was frightened."
Mr Irving: "The ghosts of the dead were still all around."
Professor van Pelt: "No, I don't believe in ghosts and I've never seen any
ghosts in Auschwitz.
"But it's an awesome place in many ways, and it's also an awesome
responsibility one takes upon oneself when one starts to engage in this
process as a historian.
"For many years, I felt I was not up to that task. It was only after very
careful preparation that I finally decided to go there and start work."
He said that when he first saw the surviving original blueprints, he saw not
just documents but part of "a state sponsored project to kill Jews".
He agreed with Mr Irving that a historian had a duty to remain unemotional
when looking at a document.
"One's duty is to be unemotional and objective but also remain human in the
exercise.
"I prepared for Auschwitz because ultimately I went there as a human being
and was frightened to go there and for the responsibility.
"To face great historical questions when they concern the murder of many
people, then I think, if one is completely without emotion when one looks at
these documents, one would be a machine and not a human being and hence not
a historian."
Professor van Pelt said that the main source for how the selection for the
gas chambers took place was from eyewitness accounts, although documents
existed which talked of only so many Jews out of a transport being fit to
work and being admitted.
"It doesn't specify the fate of the others. When 2,000 arrive and 600 are
admitted to the camp, the question is raised of what happened to them.
"At that moment, a witness testament of both Jews and Germans becomes a
valid historical source."
He said the archives, both Russian and Polish, were silent on how these
people were disposed of.
"We rely on a witness testimony and our own common sense and a careful
investigation of the machinery of murder =96 these crematoria."
Professor van Pelt said that the crematoria were dismantled by the Nazis in
late 1944 when the gassings ceased as the Russians approached.
He agreed that there was only verbal evidence for this but said that the
camp's archive was virtually systematically destroyed during its evacuation.
He denied that the sonderkommandos had "romanticised" what they had seen to
ease their own burden of guilt.
"As a historian, I'm amazed by the way that the surviving sonderkommandos in
different ways have been able to live up to their historic responsibilities
to bear witness about what happened."
Professor van Pelt said that it had not been part of his work to investigate
the extent to which Hitler knew of the events at Auschwitz.
He had seen no reference to Hitler in any of the documents he saw at the=
camp.
The hearing was adjourned until tomorrow.
Guardian / Observer
http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/irving/article/0,2763,128968,00.html
Gas chambers 'not propaganda'
Special report: the David Irving libel trial
Wednesday January 26, 2000
The author of a book on Auschwitz told the high court yesterday that there
was a "massive amount of evidence" of the use of the camp as a site for mass
extermination.
Robert van Pelt, professor of architecture at the university of Waterloo in
Canada and author of Auschwitz, 1270 To The Present, said evidence had
become slowly available during the second world war through reports from
escaped inmates.
It had become more substantial through witness accounts immediately after
the camp's liberation and was confirmed by Polish forensic investigations in
1945-46 and the confessions of German camp personnel.
He said it was "highly implausible" that the existence of the gas chambers
was a piece of "atrocity propaganda" fabricated by the British.
The evidence that Auschwitz was equipped with gas chambers which were
systematically used between 1942 and 1944 had "emerged cumulatively from a
convergence of independent accounts".
It had become possible to assert as "moral certainty" the statement that
Auschwitz was an extermination camp where the Germans killed around 1m
people with the help of gas chambers.
Prof van Pelt was giving evidence for Deborah Lipstadt, an American
academic, and Penguin Books in their defence of a libel action brought by
the historian David Irving.
The 62-year-old author of Hitler's War is seeking damages over a claim that
he is a "Holocaust denier" in Professor Lipstadt's 1994 book, Denying The
Holocaust: The Growing Assault On Truth And Memory.
Mr Irving, who is representing himself before Mr Justice Gray, denies the
systematic extermination of Jews in gas chambers.
Accused by the defendants of being "a liar and a falsifier of history", he
depends on a 1988 report by a man called Fred Leuchter, who had taken
samples from ruins at Auschwitz and concluded that there were never
homicidal gas chambers there.
Prof van Pelt described crematorium two at Auschwitz - where he said 500,000
people had died - as the "absolute centre of the atrocity".
Evidence for the killings included blueprints for building works, the
buildings themselves, and accounts of camp officials and sonderkommandos -
Jewish prisoners who worked in the crematoria.
He said that when he first saw the surviving original blueprints, he saw not
just documents but part of "a state sponsored project to kill Jews".
He agreed with Mr Irving that a historian had a duty to remain unemotional
when looking at a document.
"One's duty is to be unemotional and objective but also remain human in the
exercise."
The hearing was adjourned until today.
TIMES London
http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/Times/frontpage.html
Auschwitz death chambers 'a moral certainty'
BY MICHAEL HORSNELL
'Awesome' responsibility AN EXPERT on Auschwitz told a High Court judge
yesterday that overwhelming evidence had accumulated after the war to show
that a million Jews were exterminated there by the Germans.
Robert Van Pelt, a Dutch historian, said that a convergence of testimony
made it a "moral certainty" that the gas chambers were the main instrument
of murder between summer 1942 and autumn 1944.
Professor Van Pelt was giving evidence in the libel trial brought by the
Hitler historian David Irving, who denies the existence of homicidal gas
chambers at the Polish camp.
Mr Irving is suing Deborah Lipstadt, an American academic, and Penguin
Books, which published her work Denying the Holocaust: the Growing Assault
on Truth and Memory. He is seeking damages over a claim that he is a
Holocaust-denier who has twisted history, which he says has ruined his
reputation as an historian.
Professor Van Pelt told the court: "It will be clear that, by early 1947,
there was a massive amount of evidence of the use of the camp as a site for
mass extermination. This evidence had become slowly available during the war
as the result of reports, by escaped inmates, had become more substantial
through the eyewitness accounts by former Auschwitz inmates immediately
after their liberation, and was confirmed in the Polish forensic
investigations undertaken in 1945 and 1946.
"Finally, this evidence was corroborated by confessions of leading German
personnel employed at Auschwitz during its years of operation." He added:
"It is highly implausible that knowledge about Auschwitz was a wartime
fabrication by British propagandists. In short, it has become possible to
assert as moral certainty the statement that Auschwitz was an extermination
camp where the Germans killed around one million people with the help of gas
chambers."
The main source of his evidence had been from witnesses, but there was
documentary evidence which showed that, although the numbers of Jews
transported to the camp were known, it was also known that many were not
given registration numbers there - an indication that they were murdered
upon arrival.
Eyewitness evidence, the court was told, had been given by prisoners
including Stanislaw Jankowski, Shlomo Dragon and Henryk Tauber, on gassings
in the five crematoriums.Others had given evidence of how the gas chambers
were demolished in late 1944 and January 1945 to destroy evidence.
Confessions given by leading German personnel at the camp included that of
Pery Broad, an SS officer who testified to gassings and burning of corpses,
and Rudolf H=F6ss, the former camp commandant.
There was also the evidence from the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem in 1961,
documentary evidence of the construction of the camp, including workers'
timesheets, plans, photographs and scientific studies of cyanide compounds
in the walls of the gas chambers.
Mr Irving, who maintains most of the deaths at Auschwitz were from natural
causes and is conducting his own case, was told about a "field of ashes"
from human remains, some of which had been thrown across icy roads to help
the passage of vehicles.
The case continues.
'Awesome' responsibility
Robert Van Pelt, who is attached to the University of Waterloo in Canada and
served as adviser to the Auschwitz authorities on the reconstruction of the
site, said under cross-examination that he had been "more than deeply moved"
by his experience. "I was frightened. I don't believe in ghosts. I have
never seen any at Auschwitz. But it is an awesome place and an awesome
responsibility as an historian." Asked about the dangers of subjective
analysis of Auschwitz history, he said: "One's duty is to be unemotional and
objective but to remain human in the exercise." In a map of human suffering,
he added, Auschwitz would be at the centre.
===

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